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When Christopher Columbus and his men embarked on the second Colombian expedition to the New World (1493), the crew suffered from fever, respiratory symptoms and malaise. It is generally accepted that the disease was influenza. Pigs, horses and hens acquired in Gomera (Canary Islands) traveled in the same ship. The pigs may well have been the origin of the flu and the intermediary hosts for genetic recombination of other viral subtypes. The Caribbean archipelago had a large population of birds, the natural reservoir of the avian influenza virus. In this ecological scenario there was a concurrence of several biological elements that had never before coexisted in the New World: pigs, horses, the influenza virus and humans. We propose that birds are likely to have played an important role in the epidemiology of the flu occurring on the second Colombian trip, which caused a fatal demographic catastrophe, with an estimated mortality of 90% among the natives.

A review and update about a new zoonosis, as it is the Avian Influenza or "poultry grippe" has been made. This disease is endemic in the Southeast of Asia and continues at present time, being active in Vietnam and Tailand. We have considered the Natural History of the Avian Influenza and specifically the late epidemies, starting from the one in 1997 in Hong Kong, in which an Orthomyxovirus type A, subtype H5N1, broke the interespecies barrier. A health analysis is made, both for the present moment and the future, about the possibility of a World pandemic flu, originated by the mentioned Orthomyxovirus type A, agent of the Avian Influenza of highly virulent specificic virus strain pathogenic for men. The most favourable fact, among others, to deny the possibility of a future pandemic flu is the stability of H5N1 strain in both epidemics of poultry in Hong Kong and in the Southeast of Asia.